Machine Shop "Accidents"

[Andy A.]

I've received soldering iron burns then I can count. No machine shop injuries outside of the odd aluminum sliver or cut from a sharp edge.

This is odd since I spend an overwhelming amount of my time in the shop and no where near the soldering stuff. When I do end up wiring, it's usally because we are pressed for time and they need all the help there is (even hack electritions like me). It just goes to show that speed kills.

The worse injury I've seen on my team happend on a lathe and the kid was amazingly lucky. He was using a strip of emory to polish a part, and he was trying to use as much as the strip up as he could. His thumb got a little to close to the chuck and it whacked him _hard_. He got away with a bad bruise and black nail. He could have lost it.

I wonder about the cumalitive effect that all the fumes, greases, heavy metals and such that we all breath in, get stabbed with and rubbed into our skins.

-Andy A.